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I am -- thank the Deities -- not an alcoholic, or even a problem drinker. But there are nights like tonight, when my heart is heavy for one reason or another and I can just hear, at the edge of audibility, the whisper of the bottle. "Come and take refuge in me," it says, "and I will be the solvent of your suffering."

I am wise to that whisper. While I walk the Path of Excess from time to time, I will not let it tempt me over the edge; it remains the case, as Winston Churchill said, that I have take more out of alcohol than it has taken out of me. Dionysus and I have an understanding, a compact or sorts, and he will work through me but not break me. But I can understand how someone could fall for that voice, could neglect to read the contract.

So I'm sitting here in a park in Fells Point after perhaps One Too Many (a subjective judgment) to give my liver a chance to process things before I drive home.

And why is my heart heavy? Ah, that's a long tale, and let us just say that it involves where things stood between a certain woman and I about one year ago and where they stand today...and I need I say more? I think not.

Anyway. Sometimes I think that the only thing that keeps me from going over that edge at times like this is music. Maybe I'm making drama, but I wonder, if I had not been able to sing along with Johny Smooth tonight, if the bar had been silent, might I instead have had another drink, and another? Is that why instinct takes me to a place of both drink and music, that the later may cushion the hazard of the former?

Whatever the truth of that may be, I thank the Deties for beer and music and the healing, soothing properties they possess.